- OF/IF Ramon Nivar signed to a 1 year contract
($316,000 if he makes the majors)
My Annual Fantasy Baseball League
As regular visitors to my site know, I’ve run a fantasy baseball league for the last several years over at Yahoo’s baseball fantasy sports site. It was free, and for me, was a fun fantasy league (meaning it wasn’t deathly serious).
Anyway, a month or so ago, there was an announcement that MLB.com had gained the rights to MLBPA (or some such stuff, I forget the deal exactly now), but the bottom line is that it gave ’em a monopoly on fantasy baseball. They were allowed to sublicense the information back out to others so they could do their own things, though. An interesting thing is that the MLB Players website (which was http://www.bigleaguers.com will be taken over by MLB.com and will be called http://www.mlbplayers.com. Thing is, BigLeagers.com was run by Yahoo, so I’m not sure how all of this will play out.
I wrote Yahoo last week about this, and they responded back with their 2005 Fantasy offerings had not been set yet. Usually, they have the preliminaries set up so that folks can do their drafts and whatnot. I’m starting to think Yahoo might not have a league this year, which would stink, as I looked at MLB.com’s listed offerings, and none of them were like the league I used to run at Yahoo.
If I hear anything further on the matter, I’ll be sure and update.
Winter Warmup Recap
This morning I got hooked up to another good baseball news blog entitled “The Baseball Muse Blog”. It’s run by a guy by the name of Brandon Wilson. He lives in Flower Mound, Texas, and is a local Rangers fan. This past Saturday was the Rangers Winter Warmup, a “watered down” version of the old Winter Carnival that the Rangers used to put on (but was deemed too expensive by the current management – sigh). But I digress. I could not attend thsi year’s warmup, as I had a lot to do around the house to get ready for my Super Bowl party.
So it was with much delight this morning that I read Brandon’s blog entry on the Winter Warmup. It was extremely detailed. He appeared to attend all of the “Chalk Talk” sessions with various speakers (Jon Daniels, Buck Showalter, Orel Hershiser, & Mike Young. I suggest you take some time and read this, it was very enjoyable.
Canseco, the Rangers, & Steroids
Jose Canseco is trying to get some attention, now that he’s totally out of baseball. Several reports this morning say that some claims from his upcoming book “Juiced” say that former Rangers were introduced to steroids by him. Some of the claims he makes were that he introduced Pudge, Raffy, & Juan Gonzalez to steroids when they were all teammates on the Rangers in 1994. He also claims that George W Bush (who was owner of the team at the time) “must have known” about the steroid usage. He also claims to have personally injected Mark McGwire with steroids, and that he, McGwire, & Jason Giambi all did that together while they were all with the A’s.
Rangers management over the weekend seemed to make a point that the current administration of the team wasn’t around when all this was alledged to happen (they weren’t), and the GM at the time (current TV broadcaster Tom Grieve) said on Monday morning that Jose’s comments were a joke, and that he’s at a new level of embarrassment, also calling the use of George W’s name a complete cheap shot. Even Rusty Greer came out and said he never saw anyone use them in his 11 years as a Ranger.
Now I haven’t read the book yet (it isn’t scheduled to come out till Feb 21st), but it seems to me at this point that he’s trying to go “Uh, I did it – everyone else did, so I’m not such a bad guy”. Jose hasn’t exactly been the model citizen the last few years, and my religion dictates that I should believe people and be nice to them, but it really seems like an attempt to make a few bucks by raising allegations in a book that aren’t exactly true. However, I can’t disprove them either – I wasn’t there, nor I suspect is anyone else who might read these words of mine. It just all seems a bit “out there”, even given the current bruhaha in the last 12 months over steroids in baseball. Don’t also forget Canseco’s old spousal abuse charges from the past – just go to Google and search for ‘Canseco “spousal abuse”‘ – you’ll see it.
Here’s a few links about this steroid stuff from the various local newspapers this morning:
DMN Article 1 | DMN Article 2 | Ft Worth Star Telegram
Rangers sign Pedro Astacio, claim Bukvich
This afternoon, the Rangers signed pitcher Pedro Astacio to a minor league contract, although the terms have not been released yet as I write this (I’ll update when I find them out). Astacio on a minor leauge contract is probably worth a look. His numbers don’t really excite me (he’s only had two full season era’s under 4, and several over 6). Don’t expect much here on this one, he’s probably here to be used as an insurance policy for later on in the season assuming we need reinforcements.
We also claimed pitcher Ryan Bukvich off of waivers from the San Diego Padres. I don’t know much about Bukvich other than what I read in the Rangers press release, so I don’t have anything to add about him.
Both pitchers were put on the 40 man roster, which now means our 40 man is full. More details on this are available here.
UPDATE: It turns out the contract was actually a MAJOR league contract – no invite or anything like that. The contract is for $800,000 with another $2.2 million in various incentives. So no minor league deal here. That makes me a bit more wary of the deal. Nothing like throwing money at guys who are coming off of being hurt. Gotta love that.
Roster Transaction
- P Pedro Astacio signed to a 1 year contract [
link ] - P Ryan Bukvich claimed off waivers from San
Diego Padres
Remaining Free Agents
Read the list of remaining free agents today. There’s quite a few former Rangers on this list. They are:
Al Levine, Mark McLemore, Andy Fox, Brad Fullmer, Rusty Greer, Herb Perry, Jeff Zimmerman, Tom Goodwin, Todd Van Poppel, Darren Oliver, Todd Zeile, Robb Nen, David Segui.
Now I know we’re supposedly going to resign Zim at the start of spring training – we had done so already, but the Commissioner voided the contract, some technicality about arbitration and minor leagues – I didn’t quite understand all that. I think the same goes for Greer, if we don’t sign anyone else to be DH.
Also, I recall early in the offseason there was talk that we might take a flyer on Mo Vaughn to be our DH. We then went to Delgado & Ordonez for that, not signing either. I wonder if the Mo Vaughn rumour will fly again? Personally I hope not, I’d rather us take a flyer on Rusty Greer than Mo Vaughn.
Here’s the complete list of free agents as of today:
My home office looks cool
This post doesn’t really have much to do with the Texas Rangers per se, but since this is my site, I thought I’d mention it here. :)
My wife and I just this week replaced all the blinds in our house, the old ones were pretty crappy. It looked like they were original equipment from when our house was built in 1986. Anyway, this week we have all brand new ones that look great. I took this opportunity to get a “mural blind” for my home office. It’s got a picture of the Texas Rangers logo on it.. Aw hell, just take a look. I think they look pretty cool (you can click on the pic for a larger version). :)
Rangers out of Ordonez pursuit
Both the Dallas Morning News and the Ft Worth Star Telegram are both reporting that the Rangers will not be pursuing Magglio Ordonez. I rather agree with that decision. I don’t think we should have gone after him – we have enough kids we can play where we don’t need another potential Brad Fullmer or Brian Jordan on our hands for 2005.
If healthy, he is great (I’ve had him on several fantasy teams in the past), but I don’t think the reward is worth the risk. Especially when Scott Boorass is involved. Bleargh!
This is one of the better non moves I’ve seen, and I read that if the Tigers sign Ordonez, they might be willing to move Rondell White. We could pick him up to DH, that I’d probably like.
Jeff Nelson returns to the Mariners
2004 Ranger reliever Jeff Nelson returned to the Seattle Mariners today on a minor league deal. This is Nelson’s third go around with Seattle, having previously pitched for them from 1992-1995 and again in 2001-2003.
I remember when we signed him, I thought it was going to be a good move. It didn’t turn out that way. For the Rangers in 2004, he only pitched 23.1 innings the entire season. He was 1-2 with an ERA of 5.32. Some of his other stats…
H – 17
R – 16
ER – 14
HR – 3
BB – 19
K – 22
WHIP – 1.52
Bottom line – not good. Won’t be missed from a baseball standpoint. Would be nice if he does make Seattle’s club and then we can bat against those stats. :)
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